By Henry Akubuiro
Children of the Sun and Other Poems, Akinola Bello, SCLK, UK, 2022, pp. 64
The beauty of nature, evidenced in a spectacular environment, is considered the highest art by the greatest artist: God. In a volatile world full of destruction, poets have increasingly taken it upon themselves to remind us of the need to save, nurture and celebrate the environment.
Enter Akinola Bello’s Children of the Sun and Other Poems. Here is a poet who recognises the need to deify our environment and things of nature. It takes us to an emotive borderland where love reigns yet we encounter a despairing atmosphere when love falters and adversities stymies trajectories.
In this collection, the poet revisits man’s quest for survival and the consequences of our decisions. Children of the Sun contains poems that examine racial relationships and the disadvantages of social media today. The collection also inspires us to develop strength in character to forge a mutual understanding, even when the cords pull at contraries.
“How I Wonder” quickly opens the windows of beautiful nature. The poet speaker is enraptured by the expansiveness of the sea and its aquatic splendour, as well as the elaborate sky, which changes intermittently as it announces different times of the day.
Nature, the poet tells us, abounds with a variety of vegetation that serves our collective needs. Flowers bloom in multiple colours, and the poet declares: “nature itself amazes all/that’s why I wonder.”
Marvelling at the trappings of the elements, Bello equates the sun to a radiating ball, in the poem, “The Sun”, which controls the tune of the day and the night, from sunrise to the dawn of day. It brings either smile or sorrow to the faces of farmers and its understanding of the needs of the world when rain comes and it flees, still does the same when night falls.
The poet appropriates the seven colours of rainbow to diverse emotions we feel and share. He also draws an analogy with the sun and moon to depict the relationship between two lovers and how each respects the other in total subservience.
Bello’s Children of the Sun sees love as a beautiful thing, its presence which has a way of tickling our fancy. For instance, you can tell it is love when warmth encompasses you and there is “confusing jam of beautiful emotions”. Love is in the air, too, when you dream of precious memories and there is an intense feeling of gratitude.
Bello emphasises the need for us to be our brother’s keeper, for we all have problems which we lack the power to solve sometimes except there is help from somewhere, which is why, in “Who Can Wait for a Dance?”, the poet uses the rescue of the child hanging helplessly on a storey building, the stranded passenger robbed of his change, etcetera, to buttress. He stresses on self-sacrifice and a messianic effort to purge the land.
In the title poem, “Children of the Sun’’, the poet extols the virtue of hard work which makes man to always strive to fulfill his dreams, no matter how the sun beats him or when it’s gone. “Out and Beyond” xrays some of the negative talking points associated with social media abuse by the youths. Akinola Bello cites the example of siblings living under the same roof yet the house is as quiet as a sensory room, because both won’t talk to each other but are busy with their phones, gripped by the internet.
The author of Children of The Sun ends his poetic project by declaring that the world is a beautiful place, though some of us play blind to its charms. Though there are ups and downs in life, another day will surely come when you forget your sorrows. So “sing with the birds and dance with the trees”, says the poet.